In the Media

Visiting Scholar Ariel Ekblaw SM ’17, PhD ’20 speaks with CNN’s Amy Gunia about her work developing TESSERAE, a space architecture project involving magnetic, self-assembling tiles that could one day be used to create structures in space. “The tiles can be stacked on top of each other inside a rocket and released in space, where they can autonomously attach to each other—employing electro-permanent magnets, cameras and AI—to create a predetermined shape,” Gunia explains. The tiles “can self-assemble into something way bigger than the size of the rocket that they came up in,” Ekblaw shares, which could allow humans to build “science-fiction-worthy, big, grand structures” in space. 

Alumna Ifeoluwa Dare-Johnson, founder and CEO of Healthtracka, is named as one of the “Top 8 Women in Biotech in 2026” by Tech Round, writes reporter Les-Leigh A. “Dare-Johnson founded Healthtracka in 2021 to make diagnostics easier in Nigeria,” notes A. "People book a lab test online, a phlebotomist collects the sample at home and results arrive digitally.” 

Prof. Catherine Tucker and her colleagues published a report that reveals neighborhood disparities in access to and use of digital government services, writes Kaitlyn Levinson for Route Fifty. “Higher-income neighborhoods are more likely to submit multiple enforcement requests simultaneously via the app, leading to faster resolution when complaints are geographically concentrated and, consequently, to unequal neighborhood outcomes,” the report reads. “This underscores the need for policymakers to consider the broader social effects of digital civic tools and ensure they do not exacerbate existing inequalities.”  

Prof. Christopher Knittel joins the Climate One podcast to discuss energy policy and his research on the costs associated with homeowners implementing rooftop solar. “Rooftop solar is raising people's rates,” says Knittel. We should continue to “subsidize rooftop solar in a way that's not regressive, that is not leaning harder on those homes that cannot install solar.” Thinking about: “what is the best, most efficient, and [the] fairest way to make that [equity] happen.”  

CodeSignal, co-founded by alumnus and CEO Tigran Sloyan, has developed Agentic Skills Intelligence, a new product that “uses AI agents to evaluate the skills people use in their work and links the findings to personalized practice,” writes Forbes’ Ray Ravaglia. CodeSignal has built an AI agent “for each domain in its job taxonomy, such as engineering and sales, along with agents for capabilities that cut across jobs, among them communication and AI literacy,” notes Ravaglia. “The agents draw on systems including Gong, Salesforce, and GitHub, and they score what they find against rubrics the company says are grounded in industrial-organizational psychology.” 

An analysis by Prof. Charles Stewart III, director of MIT’s Election Data and Science Lab, found that requests for mail-in ballots were down in Georgia, Maine, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin earlier this month, reports Patrick Marley, Leslie Shapiro and Laura Meckler for The Washington Post. “Those five states can be more fully analyzed than others because they provide data showing how voting patterns compare with the same stage of the election cycle in 2022,” note Marley, Shapiro and Meckler. “In data collected four weeks before Election Day, requests were down most sharply in Georgia — by 50 percent compared with the same point in 2022.” 

Prof. Sanjay Sarma speaks to Bloomberg’s Saritha Rai about the difficulty of developing dexterous robots for use in the home versus developing factory machines for use in standardized plants. “Heavy work, hazardous tasks have long been the focus of automation,” says Sarma. “Robots seem to be following an evolutionary path–the finer the motor or cognitive skills required, the harder to automate.”  

Mike Beigel ‘70, who invented Mu-Tron III, considered to be “the first commercial envelope filter pedal [that] allowed guitar players to achieve a synthesizer-like sound” used in popular 1970s music, has died at 79, reports Alex Williams for The New York Times. “The Mu-Tron III was the most renowned of several effects pedals that Mr. Beigel invented for Musitronics, a New Jersey-based company that he co-founded in 1972,” writes Williams. Musitronics, “produced a variety of sought-after pedals, including the Mu-Tron Octave Divider, Phasor, Flanger and Bi-Phase, which have been adopted by notables like Neil Young, Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins and John Frusciante, the Chili Peppers guitarist.” 

Principal Research Scientist Deepjyoti Deka speaks to MassLive’s Tréa Lavery about the type of information stored by data centers. “Anything, mostly, that you are using the computer for, that you are getting some information from, is housed in a data center,” says Deka. “A lot of it is active data handling, but some of it is also data storage.” 

BIOSENTER, a soft, snake-like robot developed by MIT researchers, could autonomously snap photos, administer drugs, and take small biopsy samples within cramped and difficult to reach areas of the body such as the small intestine, writes Mack DeGeurin for Popular Science. “BIOSENTER has four inflatable chambers arranged along either side of its tubular body. These chambers inflate and deflate in alternating combinations, which is how it moves [forward] and bends to change directions,” explains DeGeurin. “Keeping with the snake theme, the robot’s exterior is fitted with a textured, scale-like coating that improves its traction.”  

In a conversation with Slate’s Shirin Ali, Prof. Charles Stewart III, director of MIT’s Election Data and Science Lab, discusses a framework to help voters “see important red flags in the hours immediately following Election Day,” detailed in his new paper “The Day After: Threats and Guardrails in the 2026 Election.” “After Election Day, that’s where we’re thinking about getting the final count in,” says Stewart. “We shift into the formal process of canvassing the vote, certifying it, and making sure that we’ve named the winners.”  

MIT researchers have developed BIOSENTER, a soft robot inspired by the movement of snakes, “designed to navigate the twists and turns of the small intestine [that] could perform real-time imaging, deliver drugs, and take biopsies deep within the digestive tract,” reports Inside Precision Medicine. “The robot’s tube-like body contains four inflatable chambers that can expand or contract in different combinations, allowing the robot to move forward and bend in different directions. A hollow central channel allows the robot to carry endoscopic tools, including a camera for imaging, a fluid sprayer for drug delivery, and clips for collecting tissue samples or removing small polyps.” 

Arcaea, a biotech beauty company founded by CEO Jasmina Aganovic ‘09, has partnered with the actress and producer Jennifer Lawrence to develop mes°, a new haircare brand, reports Flavio Gomez for the Los Angelos Times. “A TED Talk by Aganovic, an MIT-trained chemical and biological engineer exploring how biology can open new possibilities in beauty, prompted the two to connect and eventually develop the brand,” notes Gomez. “Instead of treating each [hair] concern as an isolated problem, the brand looks to biology for ways to address it.”  

Writing for Fortune, MIT Innovation Fellow David Siegel SM ’86, PhD ’91, Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and Stephen Henriques examine the timeline of the current investment boom in AI infrastructure. “The market may already have overbuilt relative to the payback window that data center financing assumes. Much of what corporate America spends on AI today funds exploratory pilots,” Siegel, Sonnenfeld and Henriques note. “A pullback to reassess is not only the likely next step, but a healthy one.”  

MIT researchers have designed LUCID, a thin, flexible and implantable device “that pairs a slow-release drug reservoir with tiny ultrasound transducers, aiming to help prevent glioblastoma from coming back after surgery,” writes Munis Raza for Interesting Engineering. “The transducers generate ultrasound waves right at the tip of the needle, helping drug molecules diffuse farther into [brain] tissue after release,” notes Raza. “Doctors could implant the device during surgery and let it gradually release drugs to kill remaining tumor cells.”